Technology, Knowledge and the Firm Implications for Strategy and Industrial Change PHẦN 9 potx

manuscripts and partial dissemination of research results, imposing strict conditions on accessing research material and outcomes, and enforcing delays in publication. Given the strategic nature of corporate research and the importance of intellectual property rights, these publications should mainly be seen in the light of corporate business strategies. Zucker et al. (1998) asked how a firm’s linkages to scientific networks affects its overall economic performance and more specifically its technological progress, particularly in instances when novel technologies are science-based. With respect to the role of research publications in these linkages, it has been argued that particularly in periods when there is a shift in the technological paradigm to one closely linked to science, publications by the leading firms are crucial for mobilizing relevant in-house research and external research to make a successful transition. Whatever explains corporate scientific publishing, it is obvious that publishing is not the main purpose of corporate researchers and engineers, and firms publish many fewer research articles than comparable public sector institutions (universities, research institutes and government laboratories) with the same research resources and working in the same fields of science. Moreover, if firms do decide to publish, many of these papers are likely to be co-authored with researchers in the public sector. In the case of joint research partnerships with public sector organizations, the corporate sector is bound to apply slightly different knowledge management consider- ations and strategies in view of dissemination-oriented research missions, their incentive structures, and intellectual property rights (IPR) policies of their partners in the public sector. Corporate sponsors of public research engaged in contract-based (‘formal’) cooperation will often negotiate the first rights (of refusal) to the fruits of research and the scientists must delay publishing to allow companies a head start for commercializing through filing for patents by other means. Scientific cooperation with public research organizations on a more ‘informal’ personal basis is more likely to generate jointly authored research papers, especially in the case of academic partners who have strong incentives to publish results related to research sponsored by industry, or conducted in cooperation with the corporate sector. Irrespective of the nature of contractual agreements, in the process of producing these co-authored scientific papers, researchers are likely to exchange tacit and embodied elements of knowledge and skills. These co-authored research papers therefore not only gauge the production of new collective knowledge, but also the absorption of external knowledge by the firm during knowledge creation and codification. In most areas of international open science, the main channel of disclos- ure of codified knowledge is that of conference proceedings, or research articles published in the quality-controlled peer-reviewed international 230 Innovation and firm strategy scientific and technical journals. The next section turns to the further intro- duction of the latter type of research publication and related measurement issues. 3. INFORMATION SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY 3.1 Bibliometric Analysis of Corporate Basic Research General trends in the output of basic research efforts within large science- intensive technology firms, or for that matter entire science-based industries, can be derived from statistical analyses of the quantity of papers published in international peer-reviewed scientific and technical journals. This literature-based (‘bibliometric’) approach produces a large body of quan- titative data that provides a statistically robust frame of reference for analysing the changing contribution of corporate research in research com- munities. Setsof research papersoriginating fromthe same(parent)company enable comparisons between firms, and the aggregation of those firm-level data allows for comparisons between associated science areas and industrial sectors. The number of co-authored papers originating from (informal) joint research ventures – intrafirm, interfirm and public–private – enable a range of statistical analyses on the volume and composition of cooperative corporate basic research. Although these joint papers are considered useful proxies of these cooperation-based knowledge flows and exchange, they should be handled with due care as a reliable source of conclusive empirical evidence on actual scientific cooperation (Katz and Martin, 1997). Bibliometric studies of corporate publication output in international journals conducted as early as the 1970s have provided empirical data on trends in the 1980s up until the mid 1990s, especially for US industry (e.g. Halperin and Chakrabarti, 1987; Small and Greenlee, 1977). The find- ings revealed significant increases in the 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in a 5–10 per cent share of the corporate sector in the global scientific output. Several studies have focused on large firms, a single industry, orthe distribu- tion over papers across industrial sectors within one country (e.g. Godin, 1996;Hicks etal., 1994;Hicksand Katz,1997; Tijssenetal., 1996).However, to our knowledge no systemic study has been made of worldwide output levels and trends across all sectors and countries. Returning to the major socioeconomic forces impacting upon basic research and publication strategies of modern day corporate researchers (i.e. the three ‘C’s: Competitiveness, Cooperation, and Commercialization), the aggregate-level bibliometric data on their research papers in international journals allow us to address the following key questions: Commercialization of corporate science 231 1. To what extent have the competitive pressures in the 1990s forced science-based industries to commercialize their research efforts and to shift their focus from being a ‘science performing industry’ towards operating as a ‘science using industry’? More specifically, has the published research output of the corporate sector dropped, and has the number of co-authored research papers increased at the same time? 2. How has this reorientation impacted on cooperative research ventures of firms, especially those with other firms – as opposed to partnerships with public sector research institutes and universities? In other words, have the share and composition of jointly authored corporate research papers changed? 3. And to what extent are the observed trends universal or sector-specific? Do we find different trends in the major science-based industries? 3.2 Databases and Definitions Providing answers to the above questions requires a comprehensive database of corporate research papers covering all relevant industrial fields of science, and the major research-based firms and industrial sectors. The bibliometric study is restricted to the internationally visible production of corporate research papers covered by the large multidisciplinary bibliographic databases compiled by Thomson–ISI. These ISI databases, especially the Science Citation Index®, provides the best source of information to iden- tify basic research activity across all countries and all fields of science. The statistical analyses were done with CWTS’s tailored version of the ISI databases. The research papers include all document types that, in varying degrees, originate from original basic research: research articles, review articles, research notes, and letters (editorials, book reviews, etc. are omitted). The vast majority of those papers are research articles. CWTS assigns each paper only to those (main) institutionswhere the address information refers unmistakably to the respective (main) organization(s). The analysis covers all research papers listing at least one author affiliate address referring to an organization that CWTS classified as being part of the ‘corporate sector’. The demarcation of this sector is based on the following general definition: all business enterprises, organizations and institutions whose primary activity is the commercial production of goods and services (other than higher education and medical care) for sale to the general public at an economically significant price. This institu- tional delineation includes public–private consortia, private nonprofit and not-for-profit institutions and government-owned nonprofit companies. Also included are private nonprofit R&D organizations mainly serving the business enterprise sector, or privately funded research institutes and other 232 Innovation and firm strategy R&D performing institutions (other than the higher education sector or the medical care sector, and/or mainly controlled by and funded by government). Data cleaning, unification, and consolidation of those papers to parent companies was done using information on websites and occasionally Dunn & Bradstreet’s Linkages database (formerly the Who Owns Whom Directory of Corporate Affiliations database). The data were consolidated inmid 2002,inmostcases atthe‘mainorganizational’levelof thelegal entity (i.e. parent companies, R&D labs, universities, research institutes, etc.). Corporate research laboratories, majority-owned subsidiaries and other corporate affiliations are included as far as possible in the current parent company.Companies added tothe parent throughmergers andacquisitions in the years 1996–2002 were renamed to the current parent company to ensure compatibility over time. In the case of multinational companies, a consolidated group name is defined which refers to the ultimate parent (or holding). Foreign branches and foreign subsidiaries of a company are labelled with the same consolidated name, or are listed by their country- specific consolidated name. Each (parent) company is linked to the country of location mentioned in the author address. Counts of co-authored papers are defined at the level of these main organizations. 7 Each organization is defined at the highest aggregate level – the main organizational level. They are assigned to the country of location as listed in the affiliate address on the research publications. Dividing up a paper between the participating units (researchers, organizations, countries) is to some extent arbitrary – there is no fair method to determine how much money, effort, equipment and expertise each entity contributes to the underlying research effort and writing the paper. Our basic assump- tion therefore is that each author, and associated organization, made a non-negligible contribution. Consequently, we adopt a counting scheme in which each paper is fully allocated to each of the main organizations listed in the author address heading. It is important to stress that an unknown fraction of the corporate research papers are probably not exclusively basic research-oriented; they will also relate to application-oriented (‘strategic’) research as well, and perhaps to a certain degree also ‘applied’ research that is directly related to technological development. Since universities are generally accepted to be the major locus of curiosity-driven ‘blue sky’ basic scientific research, corporate papers listing at least one university are assumed to be more basic research-oriented as compared to co-publications listing nonuniversity public sector research organizations. The papers jointly authored with nonuniversity research organizations, and especially those with other firms, are assumed to represent strategic research rather than basic research. Commercialization of corporate science 233 The publication output analyses distinguishes six types of corporate research papers; in addition to papers that were authored solely by one private sector organization, we define the following mutually exhaustive set of categories of jointly authored research papers: 1. Two firms exclusively; 2. Three or more firms exclusively; 3. One firm with public sector organizations – including one or more universities; 4. One firm with public sector organizations – excluding universities; 5. Two or more firms with public sector organizations – including one or more universities; 6. Two or more firms with public sector organizations – excluding universities. 3.3 Industrial Sectors Sector-level analyses deal with two R&D-intensive high technology industrial sectors:(1) pharmaceuticals,and (2)the semiconductorsindustry. Both are characterized by strong relationships between research, technological development, and innovation. Both involve difficult learning environments where research-based scientific and technical knowledge play an important role in knowledge creation and exploitation. Basic research in the pharmaceuticals industry explores the genetic and biomolecular mechanisms of diseases in relation to designs of drugs. For semiconductors, basic research includes the physics of solid state devices and the chemistry involved in manufacturing integrated circuits. Corporate in-houselonger term research plays astrongerroleinthe pharmaceuticals industry,wherea firm’s progress and competitive position are closely tied to advances in basic research and knowledge appropriation through patenting. Theexpected benefits of basic research for design of drugs are therefore much higher than, for example, the design of new materials for semiconductors. These sectors are defined in terms of a representative set of firms that were selected from two public databases previously or currently available on the Internet: 1. ‘R&D Scoreboard 2001’ compiled by the UK Department of Trade which covers the annual accounts of the 500 largest R&D spenders worldwide in the period 1996/97–2000/2001 (www.innovation.gov.uk/ projects/rd_scoreboard/database/); 2. ‘TR Patent Scorecard 2002’, a joint effort of Technology Review and CHI Research, Inc., covering firm-level R&D performance data based 234 Innovation and firm strategy on CHI’s analyses of their USPTO patents granted in 1996–2001 (www.technologyreview.com/scorecards/patent_2002.asp). A joining of both databases for the two industrial sectors resulted in the following sets of companies, which include most of the large and scientifi- cally leading firms across the globe: 1. Pharmaceuticals: 87 firms (55 North America, 16 Asia, 16 Europe); 2. Semiconductors: 75 firms (51 North America, 21 Asia, 3 Europe). The two lists of companies, and their countries of headquarters, are presented in Tables 9.1 and 9.2. Each set includes those firms that published at least one research paper during the period 1996–2001 indexed within the ISI/CWTS database. Note that these sets are assumed to be representative only for the large R&D-intensive companies in these sectors, and not necessarily so for the sector as a whole, which includes many high tech start- ups, SMEs, and diversified companies classified in different primary business sectors. Nonetheless, given the number of selected companies and the fact that the selection includes the main R&D actors in these industries, as well as being the main contributors of research papers in international journals, we expect a reasonable coverage of published basic research outputs of the entire industrial sector. 4. RESULTS OF THE ANALYSES 4.1 Diverging R&D Output Trends To what extent are recent shifts in the marketization of industrial R&D, as described in Section 2, visible in the corporate R&D literature? If the major business enterprises in the advanced industrialized countries indeed spent the same amounts on basic research in the 1990s, but have become more focused on strategic/applied research rather than basic research, and now promote the protection and exploitation of science-based knowledge rather than dissemination in the open literature, we should expect to find at least some of the following trends in the available empirical data: (1) more corporate researchers; (2) declining budgets for basic research; (3) more patents – especially science-based patents; (4) fewer research papers in the international scientific literature; (5) less research cooperation with other companies, and (6) more cooperative linkages with universities and other public sector research organizations. Commercialization of corporate science 235 Worldwide some 290 000 articles were published in the period 1996– 2001. The total publication output by the corporate sector shows a 12 per cent decrease during the interval 1996–2001 and this annual decline has accelerated in recent years (4 per cent in 2000; 10 per cent in 2001). As for research inputs, according to OECD figures its member states spent on average about 0.4 per cent of their GDP on basic research in the mid to late 1990s (OECD, 2001). However, country-level data on the share of the business sector are lacking, or difficult to compare, often due to shortcomings in the somewhat ambiguous concept ‘basic research’ as defined by OECD’s Frascati Manual (Geullec, 2001). 8 More detailed information exists for only afew countries, including the USA where the business sector itself collects the data (Larson, 2001). 9 Fortunately, the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD) provides more comprehensive data on the quantity of researchers in the business sector. Using the trends on the total number of researchers in the OECD member states in the years 1994–99 as a baseline, we can examine various R&D output trends over the period 1996–2000/2001. The results are presented in Figure 9.1. 236 Innovation and firm strategy 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Corporate researchers* EPO patents USPTO patents USPTO patent citations in research papers Corporate research papers Intercompany research papers Company–university joint papers Notes: *We assume a two year time lag between trends in volume of researchers and R&D outputs published in the open literature. The numbers of researchers in the business sector within the OECD refer to the period 1994–99 but are superimposed on the 1996–2001 axis for ease of comparison. Data sources: USPTO US Patent Statistics Report – Summary table; US Science and Engineering Indicators 2002; EPO Annual Reports 2000 and 2001; ISI/CWTS database; OECD, MSTI database November 2001. Figure 9.1 Diverging R&D output trends worldwide (1996 ϭ 100) The longitudinalanalysisshows steadilyincreasing numbers of corporate researchers (an unknown fraction of which are involved in basic scientific and engineering research) in conjunction with a divergence in the output trends between the two major classes of codified R&D information: large growth rates of IPR-protected patents versus a gradual decline of the freely disseminated researchpapers in thejournal literature. Moreover, we observe a significant growth rate in patent citations of the scientific literature, which corroborates the observed emphasis on the commercialization of science- based industrial R&D. 10 The divergence between both types of R&D output is fairly recent: the decline of corporate publishing has been a very gradual process up until 2000. Given the average time lag between research inputs and published outputs, this bifurcation process must have started in the mid 1990s, which seems to coincide with anecdotal evidence from other sources (see Section 2.1). The volume of interfirm co-publications has deteriorated by 25 per cent since 1996, while the numbers of industry/university co-authored articles has gradually fallen back to the 1996 level. So, it would appear that one of the main factors driving the declining publication output relates to whether or not research partners are involved in corporate basic research, and the type of partners involved. Figure 9.2 exhibits a further breakdown of the trends in the various categories of co-authored research papers, as well as temporal changes in the numbers of single company-authored articles. The largest decline occurs for research papers listing only one company. We find an accelerating rate of decline in which the share of these papers has dropped significantly from 36 per cent to 26 per cent between 1996 and 2001. Co-publications involving pairs of companies are also in rapid decline. However, the drop in papers originating from research partnerships involving three or more firms is smaller than for pairs, suggesting different knowledge creation processes and appropriation regimes in corporate research partnering depending on the number of firms involved. It would seem that the larger the number of partners involved, the more the research will be of a generic ‘pre-competitive’ nature and the results are likely to be (partially) transferred to the open literature for strategic reasons. 11 When universities are engagedin researchpartnerships withindustry they actmainlyasthe producers of basicknowledgeandadvancedtechnicalskills (andassociatedhuman capitalinthe form of PhDstudents andresearchers), while corporate research partners focus on the transfer, absorption and assimilation of that knowledge and knowhow. This relatively clear cut div- ision of labour and responsibilities, in conjunction with theindustry’s never endingneed for newinputsof leadingedge scientificknowledge,instruments and skills, ensures a fairly stable quantity of joint research papers with academics. The quantity of industry–university co-authored publications Commercialization of corporate science 237 showed a 13 per cent gain in 2000, which slipped back to 6 per cent in 2001. Due tothelarger rates of decline of the othercategories of corporatepapers, the fraction of these articles in the corporate output has increased steadily from 48 per cent in 1996 to 58 per cent in 2001. Coupling the industry’s increased need for research cooperation with universities, and the output rewarding incentive systems in the academic community, would seem to ensure a sustained flow of joint research papers reflecting knowledge flows to firms for their in-house research, technological development and further commercial use. Interestingly, industry–university co-publications involving multiple firms are less affected by the general downturn compared to single company co-publications with universities. As the size and heterogeneity of public– private research alliancesand networks grows, especially thoseaimed at producing scientific or technical knowledge to be shared amongst all (major) partners, the more prone these partnerships seem to be to disseminate this 238 Innovation and firm strategy 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 1 company 2 companies Ͼ 2 companies 1 company–university Ͼ 1 company–research institute Ͼ 1 companies–university 1 company–research institute Total Sources for company selection: ‘TR Patent Scorecard 2002’ (Technology Review and CHI Research, Inc.); ‘R&D Scoreboard 2001’ (UK Department of Trade). Data source: ISI/CWTS database. Figure 9.2 Trends in corporate research articles worldwide, all industrial sectors (1996 ϭ 100) research information into the public domain – not in the least to satisfy the researchers in the public sector who need to comply to publication output- driven rewards systems (e.g. Tijssen, 1998). In contrast, the volume of joint papers involving research institutes, or other nonacademic partners in the public sector,does show a noticeable declinefrom 1996.Since nonuniversity public sector researchers are less active in basic research and are less driven by publishing papers in international journals, the number of joint papers co-authored with corporate researchers are now also decreasing significantly. Overall, we see a pattern, similar to the trend found in the interfirm partnerships, where the number of partners involved in public–private co-publications is inversely correlated with the rate of decline. 4.2 Research Output Trends by Industrial Sector Obviously, the overall trends depicted in Figures 9.1 and 9.2 hide a high degree of variation, both at the firm level and across different industrial sectors. It stands to reason that the underlying (changes in) volume of basic research and/or decreasing publication activity will vary by industry. Arecent bibliometric study by Lim (2001), using research articles in international journals and USPTO patents, indicates a strong link between both outputs in the pharmaceuticals sector but a weaker relationship in the semiconductors industry. Limargues thatthese differencesare dueto sector-level differences in the relevance of basic research for innovations in conjunction with firm-level differences in absorptive capacity of knowledge spillovers. Figure 9.3 exhibits the breakdown of the various types of corporate research papers for both sectors, disclosing some sector-specific character- istics and developments. The large pharmaceuticals companies produced a staggering 55 962 papers in the period 1996–2001, displaying a remarkably high propensity to produce multiple-company papers, the number of which remained fairly stable in the years 1996–2001. This would seem to indicate a sustained tendency on the part of these (large) firms to take part in interfirm or intrafirm research alliances. 12 The large semiconductors companies, producing a total of 15 641 papers, exhibit a very large growth in the number of papers from partnerships involving one company and several nonuniversity public research organizations. The number of these papers rose by some 30 per cent since 1996. Furthermore, the quantity of papers listing several companies and one or more research institutes remains stable. This sector-specific finding ties in with the results of Lim (2001) suggesting that semiconductor firms depend primarily on applied knowledge rather than basic knowledge. In the semiconductors industry many intermediate steps are required to transform basic scientific breakthroughs into useful innovations, which reduces their Commercialization of corporate science 239 [...]... Innovation and firm strategy 120 Pharmaceuticals 110 100 90 80 70 60 199 6 160 199 7 199 8 199 9 2000 199 8 199 9 2000 2001 Semiconductors 150 140 130 120 110 100 90 80 70 60 199 6 199 7 1 company Ͼ 2 companies Ͼ 1 company–research institute 1 company–research institute 2001 2 companies 1 company–university Ͼ 1 companies–university Total Sources for company selection: ‘TR Patent Scorecard 2002’ (Technology Review and. .. instruments and the plant The former refers to knowledge that has been reduced to a written and transmittable form, while the latter refers to knowledge that exists subconsciously in the human mind, and is acquired through experience, imitation, and observation, and can be transferred only by personal contact (David and Foray, 199 5; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 199 5) The fraction of business funding in the OECD... characterized by a series of fundamental changes in technology, institutions and society This follows the earlier thinking of Kondratiev, Schumpeter and more recently evolutionary economists (Arthur, 199 4; Day, 199 4; Dosi, 2000; Freeman and Soete, 199 7; Nelson and Winter, 198 2; Perez, 198 3; Silverberg and Soete, 199 4) and economic historians (David, 199 3) Freeman and Louçã (2001) include a history of... 297 –306 Nelson, R R ( 198 9), ‘What is private and what is public about technology?’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 14, 2 29 41 Nelson, R R ( 199 0), ‘Capitalism as an engine of progress’, Research Policy, 19, 193 –214 Nonaka, I and H Takeuchi ( 199 5), The Knowledge- creating Company: How Commercialization of corporate science 2 49 Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, New York: Oxford... Arundel, A and R Garrelfs (eds) ( 199 7), Innovation Measurement and Policies, EIMS publication 50, Brussels: European Commission Barney, J ( 199 1), Firm resources and competitive advantage’, Journal of Management, 17 (1), 99 –120 Beise, M and H Stahl ( 199 9), ‘Public research and industrial innovations in Germany’, Research Policy, 28 (4), 397 –422 Buderi, R (2000a), Engines of Tomorrow: How the World’s... traditional way; the commitment to research 246 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Innovation and firm strategy is long term, but the research projects and programmes themselves may have short term objectives and deliverables A company’s knowledge base is comprised of the accumulated sum of knowledge on which the advance of the firm relies; – includes not only codified knowledge, but also tacit knowledge and knowledge embedded... Levinthal ( 198 9), ‘Innovation and learning: the two faces of R&D’, The Economic Journal, 99 ( 397 ), 5 69 96 Cohen, W and D Levinthal ( 199 0), ‘Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 35 (1), 128–52 Coombs, R and L Georghiou (2002), ‘A new industrial ecology” ’, Science, 296 (5567), 471 Dasgupta, P and P David ( 199 4), ‘Towards a new economics of science’,... develop the model and then can only extrapolate from past trends into the future The data for long-term economic change are necessarily sketchy and econometric methods are therefore ill suited to such broad analyses, particularly when a view of the long-term future is needed and fundamental changes in the socioeconomic system are postulated To summarize, there is no suitable and generally accepted theory... of research conducted in the university sector has increased from 1.4 per cent of the total business R&D funding to 1.7 per cent during the years 199 5 99 (OECD, 2000) The rule of ‘scientific priority’ in the scientific communication process identifies the prime knowledge producer and the moment of publication and builds a reputation, which is crucial for obtaining recognition in the scientific community,... (5), 487–521 David, P and D Foray ( 199 5), ‘Accessing and expanding the science and technology knowledge base’, OECD STI Review, 16, 13–68 Geullec, D (2001), ‘Basic research: statistical issues’, OECD Document DSTP/EAS/STP/NESTI 38, Paris: OECD Gibbons, M., C Limoges, H Nowotony, S Schwartzman, P Scott and M Trow ( 199 4), The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary . R&D output trends over the period 199 6–2000/2001. The results are presented in Figure 9. 1. 236 Innovation and firm strategy 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 199 6 199 7 199 8 199 9 2000 2001 Corporate researchers* EPO. amongst all (major) partners, the more prone these partnerships seem to be to disseminate this 238 Innovation and firm strategy 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 199 6 199 7 199 8 199 9 2000 2001 1 company 2 companies Ͼ. researchers and R&D outputs published in the open literature. The numbers of researchers in the business sector within the OECD refer to the period 199 4 99 but are superimposed on the 199 6–2001

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